My first hike from Bowen's Ranch to Deep Creek Hot Springs happened on Memorial Day, 1970. As I hiked off the "Goat-Trail" and on to the beach I saw dozens of naked people from pre-teens to seniors. I was, to use an old expression of incomprehensible surprise, Gob Smacked! I watched the hippie parade for awhile and then undressed to my "birthday suit." I fell in love that day, not with a person, but with a place, an incomparable place, Deep Creek Hot Springs. I visited my new love many times that summer and fall, introducing many people to their own version of "gob-smackery." I met a group of Deep Creek Hot Springs regulars and each time I day-hiked to the springs I saw many of them and even more converts like me. Over the years that original group shrunk as many of them stopped coming, but new hot springs devotees took their places and many of the newcomers have become permanent regulars, people like Van, the Hot Springs Wizard, Ronnie, Rodney, also known as Joe and then Jobe, Arizona Mike, short on people skills, but a genius at building pools to catch and hold the precious hot water.

Over time, the culture at Deep Creek followed the changes in the wider world. Many newer hot springs hikers were reluctant to to ditch their loin covers and some loudly criticized we pioneers of the sixties and seventies, now wrinkled, grey and stubbornly nude. Some of the newbies showed little respect for Mother Earth and her creek and hot springs as they spread litter everywhere and picked up little or none of it. The latest disgrace is the ever widening appearance of spray paint graffitti on granite boulders along the trails and even at the water's edge. I am troubled about the future of our creek and precious hot springs, changing from paradise to ghetto, eventually abandoned by decent folk and left to detritus.